


House Calls

by TaleWorthTelling



Series: Notions [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-07 02:51:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16845685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWorthTelling/pseuds/TaleWorthTelling
Summary: “You said to call if I was ever in California.”Frances had, in fact, told a handful of people to look her up in California someday before she’d left Brooklyn, but it remained to be seen whether the golden statuesque figure towering above her and all but filling her doorway was one of them. There was something familiar about him, but her mind had played tricks on her before after a long day of filling orders, and with business doing so well, there’d been more than a few of those these past several weeks and several nights as well. Like last night. She squinted tired eyes up at him, trying to pick out features that a corona of light from the rising sun behind him was obscuring.And then she replayed his deep voice over in her head, and suddenly it didn’t matter what he looked like. She’d know that voice anywhere.“Steve?”





	House Calls

**Author's Note:**

> So five years ago I wrote my first attempt at porn, and I got an awesome friend out of it, so I highly recommend that approach. I figured it's about time I revisit Frannie and let her give that blowjob she wanted to do.

“You said to call if I was ever in California.”

Frances had, in fact, told a handful of people to look her up in California someday before she’d left Brooklyn, but it remained to be seen whether the golden statuesque figure towering above her and all but filling her doorway was one of them. There was something familiar about him, but her mind had played tricks on her before after a long day of filling orders, and with business doing so well, there’d been more than a few of those these past several weeks and several nights as well. Like last night. She squinted tired eyes up at him, trying to pick out features that a corona of light from the rising sun behind him was obscuring. 

And then she replayed his deep voice over in her head, and suddenly it didn’t matter what he looked like. She’d know that voice anywhere.

“Steve?”

He shifted his shockingly bulky frame in an almost self-conscious gesture, shoulders curving down, and revealed the familiar half-grin she’d been dreaming about since she’d kissed it goodbye at the train station, mapping the shape of it with her tongue until he’d kissed her back. She hadn’t expected to see it again, not really. Definitely not so soon. It had only been a couple years. A lot had changed for her in that time, but clearly not as much as Steve Rogers.

“Hey, Frannie,” he breathed out, voice husky in that almost playful way that had made her knees weak so many times.

She raised an eyebrow. “Finally been taking your vitamins?”

He snorted, shaking his head and turning it, leaving her breathless at the perfect profile of his strong jaw and the muscular column of his neck. “You could say that.”

She looked him up and down, at his clothes and his stance and the small duffel bag at his feet, and her heart sunk. She thought dolefully of her brother somewhere in the Pacific as she got an inkling of what life looked like for him these days. “Do I get the story or is it classified?”

He pressed his lips together tightly, suddenly serious despite the surprise in his eyes. “It is classified. But I’m okay.”

She nodded, suddenly remembering that she was in her nightclothes with the door open and she’d left Steve standing outside for several minutes. “Come in,” she said around a deep yawn, waving him inside. “I’ll put some coffee on.”

“How’s your ma?” he asked, shouldering his bag and stepping inside. He seemed even bigger in the confines of her apartment. “And Henry?”

“She’s well.” She was certain there was a fresh can of coffee under the sink … “Business has been so good, she’s on vacation with her sister. They went to the shore for a few days.”

“Without you?”

She shook her head. “She’s been working herself to the bone for all the time I’ve known her. I can handle a few days by myself. Let her get some sun, you know?” She sent up a silent prayer that she hadn’t accidentally used it up; that was her ration for the rest of the month. 

“Glad business is good. But I’m not surprised. I’ve always known how skilled you are, and your work speaks for itself.”

“Thanks.” Gratitude filled her that he couldn’t see her flush at the echo of that night he'd told her she was a natural artist.

“It’s true.”

She sobered quickly. “Henry’s – well, you know how it is now, don’t you?” She looked him up and down, from his boots to his jacket to his hair. 

He nodded in sad understanding. “Are you in contact?”

“Not much. Victory mail’s great, but it seems like they’ve got him awful busy, so it’s been a while.” Was that it there in the back? “What about Bucky? How’s he been?”

“Shipped out, too.”

She paused, closing her eyes, waiting for the pang in her chest to fade. She should’ve known. “I’m sorry.” The can was right in front of her when she opened them again. Figures.

He coughed. “I’ve gotta be back by tonight.”

“Back where?” She rinsed out last night’s coffee grounds, thinking idly that she had to get a better handle on her hours soon or she’d probably develop an ulcer. 

The sound of his foot scuffing along her floor made her look up.

“For the show.”

“You have plans already?” she asked. She had another clean mug somewhere, she was sure. “Looks like you just got here.”

He huffed out a laugh. There was a bite in his voice when he answered. “For the Captain America show.”

She froze with her head buried in the cabinet. Captain America. That guy on the posters she’d seen girls giggling over, the face that perplexingly and perpetually made her flush with a longing she kept to herself. She hadn’t thought much about it, honestly. And she’d already bought her war bonds.

She pulled her head out of the cabinet, straightened up, and turned around. He’d kept a respectful distance at the door, but in her tiny, cramped kitchen, she had to crane her neck back just to see his face, even as he leaned back against her table. 

Her sleep-deprived brain slowly put the pieces together as a pretty flush crawled its way up his neck. And that meant that he wouldn’t be here long. He must have made a beeline for her place the moment he’d gotten to the city.

“Well, if we both have work today, why don’t we skip the pleasantries?”

He frowned, face scrunching in wary confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve got a date with Uncle Sam and I’ve got about a dozen dresses to alter and pants to let out.” She turned her attention to his bag. “Do you keep your rubbers on you or do they give them out with meals like the cigarettes?”

“Aw, hell, Frannie.” He pushed his hair back over his forehead, fingers shoving through the strands and leaving them almost wild; her hands itched to reach out and smooth them back into place. “Really?”

She shrugged, slipping off her nightdress and faintly thinking about how silly it was that she’d been working in her nightclothes but hadn’t taken off her brassiere. “I’ve missed you a lot, Steve, and you’re just gonna leave in a few hours, and who knows when I’ll see you again? Or if you’re headed somewhere other than the stage, somewhere dangerous, and then where does that leave us? You can’t twist my heart up in knots like that and then go. Let’s keep it simple. Now unhook me and give me something to remember for a good long time.” She turned around to offer her back to him.

For a moment there was silence. When he finally moved, barely having to lean forward to reach her, it was just to gently take her by the shoulder and pull her back around. He held out his hand, something blue clutched in it, and the other wrapped around the back of his neck. “I bet your feet still get cold.”

Something very sharp twisted in her chest as she took the pair of socks from him and examined them. They were about the right size, clearly homemade, the ends woven in just the way she’d taught him. 

Her gaze flew to his hands. He was so different, so big and bulky and not at all like the Steve she’d known so well, but strangely, his hands hadn’t changed that much. They’d been big for his body already, just bony, and her throat went tight as she stared at them. Her Steve really was in that too-big body, and it suddenly struck her. She didn’t know what to think. 

“I’ve had to relearn a few things,” he was saying, “and knitting’s been great for improving my dexterity. And I knew I was coming here.”

She launched herself forward in her underwear and threw her arms around him, her head somewhere in the middle of his chest. Her toes ached as she straightened them to stand up as tall as she could reach to bury her face in his neck instead. God, he smelled just the same, like graphite and strong soap, like his apartment. Like home. She willed all her effort into not crying. She was not going to cry. She couldn’t.

His arms were so big when they wrapped around her and held her close, but they were as gentle as they’d always been, warm and solid and real, grounding her. 

She sniffed. “I was serious about the rubbers.”

His laugh rippled through her, almost taking her off her feet. “Well, there’s been a lot of showgirls. I don’t have many left.”

“Steve!” She laid her palms flat against his chest, pulling back to glare an astonished hole through him. 

He swore as he realized how that had sounded. “I meant I give the girls most of my share, not that, you know...”

She snorted and nuzzled her face back into his neck. “And here I was thinking maybe you’d learned some new tricks.”

He brushed her hair back behind her ear, staring down at her with a curious, appraising look. “There have been a few who’ve, uh, taken me under their wing.”

“And their skirts?”

“They’re very friendly.”

The fact that it was barely six in the morning crossed her mind, but so did all the orders ahead of her and the countdown before he left town. She reached down and cupped him through his pants, riding out the startled jerk of his body and the hiss that followed. “How friendly?”

He relaxed again, pulling her tightly against him as he slipped a leg between her knees and slowly drew it up. “Very friendly.”

She shivered. Her hand shifted to accommodate the movement of his body, and she gasped as she realized that he was already firming up. Hadn’t it always taken him a bit longer? 

What if certain other things had changed, too?

The urge to know seized her, and without thinking, she started opening his belt. A wave of self-consciousness fell over her as her hands and her eyes told her this was a stranger she was behaving this way around, doing this to, but it wasn’t, it was _Steve_ , her Steve, and she pushed those feelings down with his pants. She’d done this so many times, really.

Except not really, because with all the uncertainty swirling around her, she dropped straight to her knees to do the thing she’d always meant to and somehow never did. 

“Frannie...”

She expected him to push her away, tell her she didn’t have to do this like he had so many times, but he didn’t. He stared down at her with an intensity that rippled through her, knocked her off-balance, just like that first time she’d opened her door. 

Her fingers twisted in the dense fabric of his pants. “So I’m not the first?”

He swallowed hard. “Not anymore. But I've thought about you.”

Her mouth wobbled, a bright pinprick of warmth settling into her chest that could very easily manifest as tears, and she couldn’t allow that. She eased his shorts down his long legs as he cupped the back of her head and gently stroked her hair the way she’d always done for him when he’d been on his knees for her.

The continuity overwhelmed her for a moment. She buried her face in the valley of his hip and breathed slowly, letting the scent of him fill her senses. He might be different in a lot of ways, but he hadn’t changed one bit below the belt. If anything, he was more proportionate now. She giggled as she turned her face toward his cock, marveling at how she couldn’t have even thought that word back when she’d first seen it, how different she was now. Her cheek stayed pressed against his leg as she studied it in the yellow light of her kitchen, coming to the conclusion that it was, indeed, the very same one with which she’d grown quite familiar. Her fingers idly stroked up his other leg, skittering against the downy hairs.

He waited patiently, unoffended and indulging, maybe as entranced by her as she was by him. His breathing sped up when she opened her mouth to puff warm air against him, fingers flexing in her hair but never tugging. She licked a testing stripe along his hip, down his thigh, up again and across to the other one. His skin was shiny with it by the time she’d gotten her fill, his legs tense and his body so still, so controlled. He wanted to give her this, do this for her, to be good, and she wanted to wind him up.

She glanced at the clock, then up at him staring down at her. They had just enough time for both, didn’t they?

She pressed a sloppy kiss to one hip and then a prim one to the other, and with no further flourish, she opened her mouth around the head of his cock and paused.

Maybe she expected a gasp, or an appreciative sound, or some kind of reaction you might expect to hear during sex – especially the adventurous goodbye kind – but Steve had never done what anyone expected of him, really. So why expect it now?

Instead, he breathed out, “You cut your hair,” shaky and tight. He’d wound his fingers through it so many times, but never for this.

She nodded with his cock pressed firmly to her tongue, amusing herself with the way it bobbed with her and the choked sound that forced its way up from his throat. His eyes snapped closed and stayed that way, but his mouth fell open in the prettiest O she’d ever seen, lips shiny-wet and pink.

She should have gotten his shirt off.

She pulled back to turn her face into his hand, nuzzling his palm with her cheek. Part of her wanted to see if he’d move, but didn’t. He waited she left him, rubbing her jaw with his thumb when she wrapped her hand around his. She stopped short when she moved to kiss his wrist, taken aback by two sudden observations.

One, that his hands were spotless. He’d always been a clean guy, of course, but no matter how often he’d washed them, there had always been a faint graphite smear, a lingering ink stain, a stubborn pigment. So he hadn’t been drawing lately, and that felt strange. It had been months since she’d gotten a letter, but then it’d been several months more since she’d sent one. The length of time between each one had grown longer and longer as they’d both gotten busy, become less real to each other over time and distance. She’d meant to write. 

And his calluses were gone. His skin was soft, all the familiar hard spots and rough patches smoothed over like they’d never been there. The urge to ask just what the hell had happened fluttered on her tongue and withered on her lips. 

It didn’t really bear thinking about, then, so she did what seemed like the most reasonable thing: she wrapped her lips around his cock again and sucked hard enough to distract them both.

It was funny how the taste didn’t really register until she’d gotten bolder, taken him deeper, and then it filled up her senses, not objectionable but surprising and distinct. With one hand idly pushing up under his shirt to pet him and the other on his cock, all of her concentration went to this new experience, experimenting with her tongue, with her lips, wondering how far she could get. It wasn’t until a draft blew over her bare shoulders that she realized he’d stripped off his shirt and dropped it onto the table behind him. Her nails curled into his skin, faint crescent indentations forming and disappearing before she could even form a coherent thought about the dotted line of bruises that would have left before; the way she had on his shoulders, on his back, so many times.

Steve had always been beautiful from any angle – from every angle – but he made quite an impression now, miles of skin unblemished by marks she knew he’d had before, thick slabs of muscle over his ribs and none of the pained, hungry scrawniness that had irked him. She’d loved the feel of him under her, loved the way he fit between her legs. She squeezed her thighs together as it hit her: how would he fit between them now?

She kept at it for a while, exploring to her heart’s content, teasing one moment and trying to wreck him the next, testing him, and all the while his restraint was like iron. Just as she’d begun to wonder if he was prepared to leave her to it as long as she pleased, unsteady fingers cupped her chin. He slipped free as she looked up.

His eyes had gone hazy, his chest was flushed almost as pink as the lip he was biting, and, oh, she knew that look.

She wasn’t kidding herself that she was all that good at this. It was a skill like any other, really, and one that she’d never developed. The way Steve looked at her, though … Lord, that certainly was enough to make a girl feel powerful.

She grinned. “Missed me, too?” 

A huff of air that maybe wanted to be a laugh burst from him as he quirked his head at her, the way she’d seen him look at particularly tricky sketches just as he figured out how to render them. He had his hands under her shoulders in a flash. She’d have been embarrassed by the thoroughly inelegant yelp that escaped her as he lifted her to her feet, but she was too astonished by his effortless strength – he didn’t even make a sound.

“I guess they’re not just for looking,” she said, mostly so she could stare her fill a moment longer. He was so solid. Half of her had maybe expected it all to be an illusion once he undressed, but he was very real, vital and coiled with vigor and anticipation.

“So far,” he drawled, a self-effacing note in his voice she remembered all too well, “that’s all they’ve been for.”

She wasn’t having that. “Put ‘em to work, then, mister.”

Oh, she’d missed his smile. His clever fingers had her brassiere off before she could even ask, had her underwear sliding down her legs barely a blink after. He pulled her in tight, his cock pressing a hot line into her stomach, and ran his hands down her back. He was so big now, almost caging her in with his body, blanketing her securely, but she had to laugh at how the feeling was exactly the same as it had always been. This was the very same feeling she’d had whenever he’d held her; his physicality, his presence, encompassing and powerful. Didn’t make a bit of difference that he’d grown – he’d always filled whatever space he’d been in, always commanded attention without even seeming to try, always been graceful. And if she knew one thing about Steve, it was maybe this: once he’d decided he was going to do something, he did it.

He had her good and naked down to her toes when he hoisted her up and wrapped her legs around his hips, but his pants and shorts were still somewhere around his knees, his heavy boots still on his feet. Reflex had her arms around his neck before she could even gasp in surprise. She wondered what kind of picture they made. 

The cool wall against her bare back made her shiver, the texture of the wall paper strange and so much rougher than it had ever felt on her hands. She barely had a moment to take it in before he was on her again, and now she was surrounded on all sides, held close and held up and weightless. 

His warm, damp breath on her chest was a dizzying contrast. She would’ve laughed at the way he had to crane his neck now to lave her nipple with his tongue, but the feel of it, the tickling pressure and sparks of sensation, the sensual rush to process it all, stopped her short. He carefully nosed aside the star danging over her sternum, the gossamer chain tickling everywhere it touched on her heated skin, so sensitive in this moment. The angle changed when his lips drew up to her clavicle, revealing more of his face; and the odd combination of determination and contentment – so quintessentially Steve Rogers, in any body – soothed the maelstrom in her head.

She sighed, relaxing into his steady grip, letting it wash over her as his attention turned to her neck, a hot line up her throat that tipped her head back.

She ought to come up with something snappy, something witty. Ought to do something. Maybe kiss him dizzy the way he was doing to her. All she could think about was the spread of her thighs around him, pinned wide to accommodate his new frame. Up close, he was sleeker than he looked, but still so different, still so much bigger than she knew what to do with, really. She couldn’t decide if the realization of her vulnerability bubbling in her gut was heady and exhilarating or just plain overwhelming.

His hips were still narrow. There was that. She glanced over his shoulder, taking in the perfect view of the flexing swell of his backside before he hitched her higher on his hips to drag his teeth along her shoulder.

Her heel dug into his flank. Breathlessly, she said, “The wall’s itchy.”

She clutched his shoulders harder as he spun her around, but he gentled as he laid her across her narrow kitchen table. She wanted to complain about how unhygienic it was – she and her mother ate dinner there, for goodness’ sake – but she lost the ability to care when his cock pressed between her legs. You know, she was half hanging off the table anyway. She could make a new tablecloth. It felt much nicer than the wall, that was for sure.

She pulled him down, kissing him fiercely and trying to pull him inside her at once with her feet at his back. A howl rose up in her at the feeling, at the familiarity of it. Oh, he felt just the same. But it had been a while for her. She kept her heels planted firmly, but it didn’t matter, really – he’d turned their kisses languid and sweet, prepared to wait even as his hard muscles tensed in expectation. 

He kissed her breast. “You okay there?” he breathed, palm soothing circles over her lower belly to remind her to as well.

She shifted, trying to get a better angle. “I’ve maybe been a little on the tense side lately,” she bit out around a laugh.

He frowned. He broke free from the grip of her legs, but not to start moving; he carefully pulled away entirely.

She sat up on her elbows. “Steve, wait...”

Before she could so much as whine, Steve had dropped silently to his knees and buried his face in the space he’d left. 

“Steve, please, are you sure--”

His laugh was almost wild. “If you didn’t mind it, it’d be pretty sorry of me to complain. Besides” – the flat of his tongue dragged straight up where she was wettest – “I like that you taste like me.”

She whined anyway, a high, breathy thing, like steam escaping, but with it, the tension she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying. She dropped back onto the table as his big hands came up to massage her thighs from the outside in, up, and up, and up, until he was spreading her open between his thumbs. She dragged her hands down her face, pressing the heels into her eyes until starbursts formed. 

With her legs over his shoulders, she drew hard circles on his back, like she could channel the energy coursing through her into his body, ground it down into the earth below, and damned if she didn’t feel silly, but damned if she couldn’t quite care. 

He knew her so well, knew just how to play her body like an instrument and wring from her every sound he needed to hear, until she was tensing and frozen to the spot, mouth dry from her panting.

He stood when her legs, weak and shaking, finally relaxed, carefully maneuvering them from his shoulders. He moved to wipe his mouth, but she pulled him down first, meeting him halfway. She kissed her slickness from his lips the way she’d always done. He surged into it, barely muffling his moan between them, lining himself up again. She’d gone soft and languorous below him, but she felt powerful, felt like she could take on the world right now.

He’d barely breached her when something unfortunate occurred to her.

“Wait!”

He froze immediately, going unnaturally still, eyes startled and confused. 

“I really did mean it about the rubbers,” she said regretfully. “How about you grab one, and we go to my bedroom and do this right?”

His shoulders slumped with relief. He nodded as he helped her to her feet. She leaned against the doorway for a moment, still panting, watching him finally push off his boots and pants before he crouched down to reach into his bag. His other hand pushed his hair back from his forehead. He swallowed thickly, and the quiet sound was so loud in her silent kitchen, no competition but the clock ticking over the stove.

He looked collected when he met her in her room, calm and focused. The envelope crinkled in his hand as he held it up for her inspection. She nodded, taking it from him to put it on with a practiced ease.

It was slower this time, softer, sweeter. He rolled with her almost onto her side and pulled her leg over his hip, rocking gently, and that was all she needed, really, this closeness, his familiar smell, the blissful look on his pretty, clever face. She moved with him, content to follow his lead, letting the tightness in her belly coil sluggishly and build. When he finally shuddered into her neck, she didn’t chase it. 

He nuzzled at her as he relaxed, kissing the hinge of her jaw, the shell of her ear, so sweet she almost couldn’t stand it. There was sweat on her neck, the backs of her knees, traces of spit and slick on the insides of her thighs, all of it sticky and cooling. Steve reached down to clean himself up with some tissues from her nightstand. She focused on those unromantic things to keep her mind far away from the mutual understanding that it was unlikely they’d have this again. It didn’t work.

Steve’s palm stroked up and down her arm, a warm and solid counterpoint. 

“Do you have someone?” she asked softly.

His head tilted down at her, a crease forming between his eyes.

“There must be someone,” she went on, pulling herself farther across him until she was practically lying on his chest. “You have this look.”

He stiffened under her. “I’m not stepping out on anyone to be here, Frannie.”

“I know that.” She kissed his neck softly in apology. “But there’s someone else out there you’re thinking about. Someone who thinks about you, too.”

He stayed tense and uncertain, shifting her in his arms.

She frowned. “Is there a boy?” 

He swallowed, looking away. “There is someone. I haven’t seen her in a few months. We’re not – we weren’t together.”

“But you want to be.”

He sighed, finally relaxing. “You know,” he said, a laugh worming its way loose, “it should be strange that we’re talking about this, especially now...”

“But?”

He kissed the top of her head. “But it’s not, really. You know me so well. And I trust you. It feels right.”

“I want you to be happy, Steve.” She swung her leg over him and straddled his chest, sitting up to look him full in the face. If he was surprised by her boldness, he didn’t show it. “I mean it. You deserve to be happy with someone. I don’t like the thought of you being alone. You’re too comfortable on your own. You’d never even notice if you were lonely.”

His mouth pulled to one side in a little small. “You’re sure I’d be lonely?”

She reached down and ran her fingers through his hair, scratched her nails lightly over his scalp until his eyes slipped closed. “You like people, in your own way. You need people to be good to.” She paused, shifting her hips downward while she debated asking where Bucky was in all this, if he was safe. Something told her she didn’t really want to know. “If it can’t be me, I’m sure it’ll be someone wonderful. You have very specific taste in women.”

“And questionable taste in men, I know.”

“I think most of us do.”

He laughed, throaty and full, bouncing her on top of him. “What does that make me?”

His cheeks were rough when she took his face between her palms. “A very sweet exception, darling.”

She slid down his body to wrap her arms around him in a proper hug, intent on holding him close, but the hardness that greeted her stopped her short. She swiveled around to stare it at, twisting back and forth in astonishment. “Already?”

“I mean … I never really … not totally.”

She laughed heartily, ugly snorting and body shaking raucous laughter, dropping herself to his chest to let him hold her through it. Wiping tears from her eyes, she kissed his forehead. “Oh, Steve. I think I’ve got another itch to scratch after all.” She raked her fingers through the damp thatch of hair at the base of his cock, tugging just enough to show she was serious.

They’d come back around to playful when she sunk down onto him, a little tender but that was fine, it was all fine. She studied him from above, palms flat on his chest, his supportive hands on her hips. The sun had risen fully and lit him up golden and beautiful. She couldn’t quite make herself care about the time, couldn’t make herself care about anything until he made a face and nudged her hip to pull off. She wrapped her hand around him instead, kissing him deeply through it.

She caught her breath for a few minutes, taking in the cars outside and the curious absence of sound from her neighbors, before she moved.

She rolled over to the edge of her bed and reached down to fumble around in the basket on the floor. His palm touched down carefully on her lower back. She smiled to herself at the gesture. It took no time at all to find what she was looking for, but she dug around for a minute more just to linger on the feeling of him, the weight of his arm anchoring her so she wouldn’t fall. The feeling was strangely easy to reconcile with the memory of how he’d been before because the sentiment was exactly the same, one hundred percent Steve Rogers -- the bony boy with the piercing blue eyes who’d always carried himself with dignity despite everything and always placed himself like a shield between the dangerous and the vulnerable. She felt down to her bones that these were the hands that had held her when she was down, absentmindedly pushed her hair back over her ear, showed her how to draw. The same hands she’d taught how to hold a needle and thread, how to mend a cuff. The same fingers she’d teased on her tongue, sucking them in slowly, nipping them playfully.

And this body knew her. His fingertips dutifully traced her sacrum, filling her with the memory of the night he’d traced her with his tongue and breathed what art school had taught him about anatomy into the curves of her body, teasing out all the spots that made her gasp and shiver just like she was now.

She rolled over without ceremony, not letting him work her up however innocent his intention. 

She tilted her head at him, at odds with the serious set of her mouth. “Give me your hand.”

He waggled the fingers of his outstretched hand at her; the muscles in his arm flexed hard and impressive, distracting her. 

The thimble had warmed already in her clutching hand, but he was still warmer when she dropped it into his waiting palm. He was so warm now. She was glad for that. He’d spent so much of his life freezing and unable to get warm – she didn’t want him to be cold ever again. 

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, honey-slow and just as sweet. He turned it over, rubbing the pads of his fingers into the ridges of the surface, mapping the texture of it. 

She waited until he turned his eyes toward her to speak. “You’ve got to look smart, Steve. You’re a big shot now. And you don’t want to be walking around all raggedy in front of your showgirl pals.” She curled her fingers around his, pushing his hand closed and pressing it to his chest, tucking herself into the crook of his arm after. “Thought I should give you something to remember me, too.”

His breathing was slow and deep in her ear, so hypnotic that she was almost lulled to sleep before he finally answered. “Do you still have our drawings in your sewing basket?”

They were worn a little ragged, but they were certainly there. 

“I thought so.” He studied the thimble for a moment. “I’d never forget you, Frannie. Not if I make it to a hundred.”

He dropped a kiss to her shoulder before he stood up. “You got any eggs?”

She thought about turning him down when he offered to make her breakfast, but she’d always enjoyed the quiet moments with Steve, and she was hungry, so he must be. Her stomach put an end to that debate, and in the end that was what stuck with her, Steve in his shorts at her stove, her in her robe finally filling the percolator, the comfortable meal they shared before he finished dressing and hugged her goodbye.

“Think there are any tickets to that show left?” she asked at the door.

He looked heavenward for a moment. “I knew you were gonna ask that.” He sighed, pulling his bag forward on his shoulder to dig around in it for a moment. He held out his hand with a slip of paper in it, but he didn’t relinquish it right away. “Promise you won’t laugh too hard. You might startle the kids.”

“What if I get it all out before the show?” She took it carefully, reading the information on it, torn between amusement and disbelief. “I’m proud of you, Steve. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but I know you’re doing something good.”

A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I don’t know about that some days.” 

“You are,” she insisted. “And I won’t hear any different. If this isn’t it yet, then you’ll push through, and you’ll get there. You’ve gotta shovel a lot of manure before they come up roses, Steve.”

His mouth opened, then closed. “I love you, Frannie. I’ll write.”

“And I’ll be” – she glanced at the ticket again – “gosh, all the way in the nosebleeds? Aren’t you the star of this thing, Captain?” Her tongue stuck on the words, suddenly real.

“You’d be surprised,” he said lightly. “Besides, it’s the girls who do the real work." 

She rubbed her thumb over the ticket after he'd left, amazed that he'd been under her nose this whole time, wondering how he looked up close in the tights.


End file.
